Google held a Chrome event today, and the rumours had suggested we might see the launch of Chrome OS today. This turned out to be nonsense, and in all honesty, the entire event didn't really deliver much in the form of new information. The Chrome Web Store has been opened, and the first Chrome OS netbooks will arrive in the middle of 2011.

I'm surprised to see so many comments talking about the disadvantages of a computer running Chrome OS and hardly any talking about the benefits.

First of all, anyone that makes reference to Chrome OS not being a "real operating system" just sounds silly. Of course it's a real operating system. If you mean to say something else, then say something else.

You would (in theory) never need to go through something like a reinstall. During an upgrade, all of your data and preferences, by definition of the operating system, remain untouched. There are no viruses or malware. It uses a user interface (A web browser) that is familiar to many computer users.

I suspect Chrome OS would be used differently than other popular operating systems. For example, you would upload photos from a memory card directly to a website such as Flickr. You would listen to music from a website such as Pandora instead of having gigabytes of MP3 files.

Are there other major benefits that I missed? Are there any you feel that should be incorporated into other operating systems?